We live on a planet with at least four dimensions. The fourth, that of time, is an important, yet often overlooked metabolic component of our day-to-day resource management approaches and Standard Operating Protocols. Two relatively new companies, TrifectaGIS and Groundswell Technologies Inc. have joined forces to apply a patented constellation of remarkable ecological and human infrastructure applications that can make all of our lives safer by actuating this fourth-dimension in a manner comporting with clear and present environmental security risks. This revolutionary cloud-based technology could offer a middle road forward – a data-driven stewardship approach and accountability framework to fill contentious information gaps that persist among industries, environmentalists, and policy makers, resulting in one politically-doomed ecological juggernaut after another.

As Groundswell Technologies, Inc.’s founder, Dr. Mark Kram described his (publicly readable) patent to me: “We've devised a system which includes the integration of spatially distributed sensors, telemetry, and automated geospatial processing and 2D/3D/4D visualization through a cloud-based service to enable people to more effectively manage precious resources. We wanted to merge key technologies to streamline critical decision-making processes by automating the capture and conversion of raw data into actionable information.”

Dr. Mark Kram, (C) Dr. Mark Kram

Dr. Kram, a veteran environmental scientist of nearly three decades, obtained his Ph.D. from the Bren School of Environmental Science, at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Kram was the recipient of the prestigious National Ground Water Association's 2011 Technology Award. In a world where clean drinking water comprises less than a meager 1% of all existing fresh water – a life-sustaining component of biodiversity that is fast becoming the most contentious and precious resource on Earth – that is no small accolade.

To fulfill this vision, Dr. Kram’s team joined forces with TrifectaGIS to build a platform called “Waiora,” which in the Maori (New Zealand) language means “water spirit” or “pure water.” TrifectaGIS specializes in the development of cloud-based, geospatial software to manage infrastructure. The corporate alchemy began when TrifectaGIS’s Mr. Bob Rudnick met Dr. Kram during an energy and water forum at the Bren School. Mr. Rudnick, an affable visionary and lawyer by training, comes from a cattle ranching family that in the early years of the 20th century owned more than 1 million acres of land across the Western states. Says Rudnick, “I came to realize the importance of being a responsible ecological steward of land. In order to build a lasting global economy, it is imperative that society be accountable in order to sustain this fragile planet we all co-habit. We must create the tools for society to engage in fair play, transparency and shared responsibility with a common purpose, vision and resolve.”

After learning of Dr. Kram’s vision of building a software platform capable of web-based real time environmental monitoring, Rudnick persuaded Mr. Clark Easter, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of TrifectaGIS to help accelerate delivery of the cloud-based system; an automated powerful software algorithmic tool that enables practitioners in dozens of scientific and applied engineering and management arenas to gauge potential or real environmental hazards, and to document across time the success of remediation efforts.

This is effected through the real time collecting and assessing of data in 2-D, 3-D, and in 4-D (meaning 3-D plus the key temporal element) from a multitude of targeted environmental sensors placed in strategic locations, all connected via telemetry and the cloud. Using a web browser to capture a mass of data from multiple sensors simultaneously in real-time, with the capacity to re-play, assess and convey analysis of that data with optimal efficiency (also through a browser), has never been accomplished, until now, according to Dr. Kram and team.

Fukushima radiation distribution, (C) Dr. Mark Kram

Whether one is speaking of hydraulic fracturing or any number of groundwater pollution management situations – plume remediation, groundwater supply changes, or monitoring of municipal infrastructure such as landfill liners or sewer overflows – this TrifectaGIS/Groundswell Technologies Inc. endeavor promises a number of potent, sorely needed data-crunching tools that will improve all of our lives, not to mention the likely health of tens-of-billions of other animals and plants.

Consider the following, tragically familiar ecological scenarios: nitrates and phosphates and sewage are slowly killing a lake or a bay – and life therein – but no one (until this time) can pinpoint precisely which farms or developments the runoff is escaping from and thus, nothing improves; or a forest fire, fueled by ferocious winds driving hot embers in all directions, inhibits the conventional targeting of human resources to fight it, all of us watching helplessly the evening news; or an oil spill of massive proportions spreading rapidly, whilst a flotilla of command-and-control response teams lack real-time coordinated data to get a unified and realistic handle on the fate of the contaminants in the environment during the first critical hours of the calamity; a nuclear reactor accident, exacerbated by any number of geologic, hydrologic and meteorological factors (and, for added horrible measure, a tsunami), seriously compromises the ability of experts to monitor and control the medical fall-out from spreading radioactive materials; a biological or chemical terrorist device, detonated in a city, throws the multi-jurisdictional PHMSA/HAZMAT teams into a deployment frenzy that cannot fully gauge the dimensions of the horrific crisis quickly enough to save lives that, otherwise, might be spared.

Take the most recent 4-D relevant challenge, when President Obama declared in his 3rd State of the Union Address that America is the “Saudi Arabia of natural gas.” Central to this proposed domestic energy policy is the natural gas fracking debate as it escalates across state lines, polarizing the public, government, energy conglomerates, and many of the largest environmental NGOs in the world, such as The Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.